The Forest of Hands and Teeth

The Village + any generic zombie film - shotguns + obnoxious nuns = Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Very quick read that I'm sure teens will latch onto though. Carrie Ryan does excel at making the reader sympathize with the narrator. I was so glued to my dislike of one character I couldn't even change my mind when I was supposed to consider him an okay guy again.

There's apparently two sequels to this I don't see the significance of. Not every YA book needs a sequel. That's certainly not a gripe specific to this book though.

Spoilers

I did like how the second village was a glorified Ewok town in the trees. If you're going to be surviving the zombie apocalypse, making for the trees is brilliant.

Alright, I read this book in one sitting. I've been wanting to read it for a while now and had really high hopes for it. Unfortunately, this is the most god awful book I've ever read. I love dystopian novels but this just doesn't cut it... at all.

The protagonist, Mary, is a selfish, insatiable girl who puts her dream of seeing the ocean before anyone else, getting people killed along the way. People actually read this book and call her a heroine. It is just straight up disgusting anyone would think of this girl as a hero. She is stupid, selfish, and irresponsible. She is never happy with anything or anyone. People die because of her stupidity and she acts as if she doesn't even care because all she cares about is getting to see the ocean, something she doesn't even know if it really exists or not.

Everyone else in this book are happy just to be alive. But not Mary. She needs more. She always needs more. She has 2 men in love with her, and i don't understand it. She isn't happy with Harry, and finally get to be with her true love, Travis. But then she isn't happy with him because she wants to see the ocean. It takes him dying for her to finally appreciate him. That is NOT the actions of a hero. A hero puts everyone else before their self. A hero doesn't make stupid decisions on whim, on something they aren't even sure exists.

I love zombie books but I actually hate this book. Everything about it is just awful. The writing is somewhat bad. There is hardly any dialog. The characters are underdeveloped. It seemed no one else, except Cass, had a mind of their own and were just another extension of Mary. The plot has holes and a lot of things are discovered but never examined properly. Overall, you just don't get a really big feel of what living in the village was like. You get more of a description of the ocean than their village which is really sad considering we already know what the ocean looks like.

In the end, she ends up getting to live her dream and finally see's the ocean. Go figure.